Home / uchicago-dsi / ai-sci-skills · skills/maintenance-pass/SKILL.md · GitHub

maintenance-pass skillA

maintenance-pass is agent-read markdown (skill) from uchicago-dsi/ai-sci-skills: Run safe, high-yield codebase maintenance passes that trim dead code, vestiges, duplicate implementations, stale scripts/configs, and excessive LOC without churn. Use when the agent is asked for a maintenance pass, cleanup pass, code cleanup, slop trimming, dead-code removal, de-duplication, vestige pruning, or refactors whose purpose is reducing maintenance burden rather than adding features..

Indexed from public GitHub and served as immutable, content-addressed versions. Install it pinned to an exact SHA-256 with the mdr CLI, and every file is verified against the hash recorded here before it reaches your agent. The deterministic audit below grades the latest version, and the same file always earns the same grade.

What the file says

# Maintenance Pass

## Optimize For Maintenance Yield

Prioritize the safest change with the largest maintenance payoff. Delete or simplify code only when evidence supports it. Refactor only when it materially reduces duplication, clarifies ownership, removes a failed path, or protects an important contract. Do not move code around for aesthetics.

Use this rough ranking:

```text
maintenance yield = impact * confidence * stale_touch_signal / blast_radius
```

Treat time since last git touch as a triage signal, not proof. The relevant metric is the most recent commit that changed a path, not when the file was created. Code whose latest git touch was a long time ago is more likely to be a vestige, duplicated old path, or stale interface, but stable core infrastructure can also be old and correct.

## Start With Evidence

1. Read local repo instructions first: `AGENTS.md`, `CLAUDE.md`, `README.md`, nearby runbooks, and provenance notes tied to the target area.
2. Check the worktree: `git status --short --untracked-files=all`. Never revert unrelated user changes. Avoid destructive cleanup in a dirty worktree unless the user explicitly scopes it.
3. Establish stable baselines:
…

Read the whole file at its exact version.

How to install

Latest version
mdr add uchicago-dsi/ai-sci-skills/maintenance-pass@git:20260921.9b3de7c
Exact content
mdr add uchicago-dsi/ai-sci-skills/maintenance-pass@sha256:283fd73840814534

Pin to a label to follow the author's releases, or to a sha256 to freeze the exact bytes forever. Either way the resolved hash is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install reproduces it on any machine.

Badge

mdr badge

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Versions

versioncommittedcommitsizeaudit
git:20260921.9b3de7c latest2026-09-21 9b3de7c 17,482 BA view · diff
git:20260730.d0b15762026-07-30 d0b1576 14,970 BA view · diff
git:20260710.665db892026-07-10 665db89 13,572 BA view · diff
git:20260710.10664bf2026-07-10 10664bf 12,394 BA view · diff
git:20260710.78b34b82026-07-10 78b34b8 11,998 BA view

Audit of the latest version

A  17 of 17 checks passed. Deterministic, no model, same answer every run.
  • pass: Frontmatter block present
  • pass: Frontmatter declares a name
  • pass: Frontmatter declares a description
  • pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (17482 bytes)
  • pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
  • pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
  • pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
  • pass: No credential-shaped string
  • pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
  • pass: No text hidden with inline styles
  • pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
  • pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
  • pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
  • pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
  • pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
  • pass: No link to a raw IP address
  • pass: No script tag

Source

GitHub

uchicago-dsi/ai-sci-skills · 20 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-09-23 · branch main

API

GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_u4uuu3y4wcwzlkkp
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=uchicago-dsi/ai-sci-skills/maintenance-pass
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/283fd738408145342578941b29ab8b759c0756fa0696e82a297d848a80bbd731

Your agent does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.

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